Podcast 243: Can I Be A Plus-Sized Herbalist?

Katja writes…

Today a student sent me a question and it was so important, i asked her if i could (anonymously) share it, because i know other people are wondering this too.

I wanted to ask for any advice or your thoughts on how to handle being a plus size herbalist.

I am plus sized. Though I am currently in working on a healthier life style that includes using herbs, I feel like when people see me or see that Im plus sized that they may not want to work with me or any of my products.

I feel like this is my calling I have fallen in love with herbs and how they naturally work with in the body. but I feel like this could possibly hinder me from even opening my own practice one day. I kinda feel alone in this due to most of the herbalist I see on social media are very fit and “healthy”.

Am I wrong to want to be an herbalist even though I am also going through a battle and journey with my weight?

The bottom line is: we need you. We need plus-sized herbalists. We need everyone, no matter where you are in your journey, whether you’re small or big or short or tall or thin or fat or disabled or abled or sedentary or athletic or anything else.

And the other bottom line is that weight and health are not the same thing. I know that society has all these ideas about what is “good” and “healthy” but that doesn’t mean they’re true. You can be healthy and big! You can be healthy and small! You can be unhealthy and be small or big too!

We’re all just trying to get through our day, and we’re all in the body we’re in. You don’t have to get thin to get healthy, so let’s make our bodies healthy now, regardless of what size or shape they are. And let’s love them too because bodies are pretty amazing actually!

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Katja (00:14):
Hi, I’m Katja. And I’m here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts and on the internet everywhere, thanks to the power of the podcast. I am just making a quick emergency pod today. Actually in a little bit Ryn’s going to make a new episode for you about some more of the herbs in commerce and some other great stuff. But there was something that came up today that I felt like I just had to talk about right away because it’s so, so important. So, the disclaimer, you know, or our reclaimer, we always do our reclaimer. Oh, y’all know what it says, right? I’m not a doctor. I’m an herbalist. And it’s not going to matter for this one anyway, because there’s no medical advice in this episode. And we don’t give medical advice anyway because we’re herbalists. And also, you’re awesome. Okay. That’s the super short version of our reclaimer.

Katja (01:16):
Here’s the issue. A student wrote today and said… Well, here’s what they said. Here’s what they said. I wanted to ask for any advice or your thoughts on how to handle being a plus-sized herbalist. I am plus sized, though I’m currently working on a healthier lifestyle that includes herbs. I feel like when people see me or when they see that I’m plus sized, they may not want to work with me or work with any of my products. And I feel like herbalism is my calling, and I have fallen in love with herbs and how they work naturally in the body. But I feel like this could also hinder me from even opening my own practice one day. I kind of feel alone in this due to most of the herbalists I see on social media are very fit and quote, healthy. Am I wrong to want to be an herbalist even though I am going through a battle and a journey with my weight?

Katja (02:21):
We need you. We need all of you plus-sized plant lovers out there. We need every body to learn about how to help each other with our health, with plants, with everything. We, we are all we’ve got, all of us. And we all are living our lives in the bodies we’ve got. They may be skinny, they may be plus size, they may be abled or disabled. They may be bodies that were shorter than we wanted to be, or taller than we wanted to be, or the wrong color hair. Well, I guess that one’s pretty easy to fix, but whatever. Not a single one of us is happy with our bodies. Nobody is. I wish I were short. I’m six feet tall. I wish I was like five feet tall and tiny. I can’t tell you how much I wish this. And everybody’s like oh, but you must love being tall. No, I hate being tall. So, that’s the first thing. Every one of us doesn’t love our bodies. That’s not even the first thing. The first thing is being skinny doesn’t make you healthy. Appearing to be fit doesn’t make you healthy. Look at every like Olympic gymnast out there. They look really fit, right? They’re skinny, they’re whatever. Most of them have to have joint replacement surgeries before they’re 30. Simone Biles, I think, maybe hasn’t had to do that yet, but she is the goat. It’s true. She is pretty amazing.

Katja (04:11):
But if we look at ballet dancers, whatever. My sister-in-law was a professional ballerina – like Swan Lake and all that stuff – at a big company. And she’s tiny, and she looks fit. And definitely if you just looked at a picture of her, you would be like oh yeah, I always wished I looked like that. She’s not healthy. Every joint in her body is busted. So much of her body has borne the incredible toll of that work. But nobody sees that when she’s walking down the street. They just look at her and say she’s healthy. If you asked her, she would be like are you kidding me? No. But we just look at other people, and we think oh, that person’s really healthy. We don’t know they’re constipated all the time.

Katja (05:08):
We don’t know that they’re whatever, whatever’s going on for them. Because they don’t have a sign, they don’t wear a t-shirt that says, I’m not actually that healthy. I know I look great, but I’m not really that healthy. We also don’t have t-shirts that say it doesn’t matter how much I weigh. I actually am wicked healthy. So, I guess I’m just trying to say we have to separate these ideas between what you look like and whether or not you are, or ever have been, or ever could be healthy. We’re all in the bodies we’re in. We’re in the bodies we’re in. It’s part of our journey through life, right? And so we do whatever we can to try to make it more comfortable. For some people that’s tattoos or piercings. And for some people it’s how they dress or what color they make their hair. For some people it’s going to the gym all the time. Whatever it is, we are all just trying to find a way to get through every day in this life, in the body we’ve got, in the world we live in, in all those things.

We Need Every Kind of Herbalist

Katja (06:23):
And because of that, we need herbalist in every kind of body. We need every kind of herbalist. And so yes, there are so many social media influencers out there who have that look. I don’t know. I don’t want to make a blanket statement in any direction. But if I were going to make a blanket statement, I would say don’t trust them. Don’t trust them. Definitely don’t trust anybody just because of how they look. Don’t ever do that. Trust them if their information is good, but not because they look healthy. Because you don’t know. You don’t know what’s going on for them. And on social media, you don’t even know if they’re telling the truth, you know?

Katja (07:12):
So, maybe I should have written down bullet points because I feel like this is all rant and no organization whatsoever. But I also feel so ferociously about this topic. We need big herbalists. We need some small herbalists too. That’s great. If you are a plus-sized person out there, if you are a big person, if you are living life in a larger body, if you’re fat, whatever, do you not think that other people who are living that experience deserve to work with someone like them? They deserve to work with an herbalist who knows what it’s like to be discriminated against by how they look. To be told oh, you weigh too much to be healthy. They deserve to work with somebody who has those experiences and can help them navigate life in their bodies. Because it doesn’t actually matter how much you weigh. That’s not what makes you healthy or not. Whatever kind of body you have, there are ways to support the things that you want to do in your life. Oh, it’s true. At six feet tall I was never going to be a professional Olympic gymnast. That was never going to happen. Okay. There are some things that you can’t do in your life. But as a hobby from time to time, I used to love to play on the balance beam. I did some circus stuff. There are things you can do at the hobby level. So, I don’t want to say anyone can do anything. No. I mean, there are some limits on us. But if you have some specific health goals, if you have some specific mobility goals, it doesn’t really matter what your weight is. You can work towards those things.

Katja (09:37):
It doesn’t matter what your weight is about whether you’re healthy or not. Skinny people are not necessarily healthy. Lots of skinny people are very unhealthy. Lots of large people are quite healthy. And so yes, we need every kind of herbalist. We need large herbalists just to remind other people that you can be healthy in any kind of body that you’ve got. So, yes, please. If you are out there, and you are plus-sized. And you are thinking like this person, how do I handle being an herbalist in this body? If people see me, I think they’re not going to want to work with me. Oh no, we can fix that. That’s just a matter of getting the word out there. That’s just a matter of how we present you to the world. That’s business skills. We can deal with that. But we need you. We need you as an herbalist. We need you to help all the other people who are like I think I could be healthy. And I’m not getting the support that I need to do that because I’m being told that just lose weight, and that’s the total solution. That’s not the total solution. Be healthy in the body you’ve got. And if you are feeling like you are in love with herbs. And you love learning about them, and making herbal products, and learning how to help people with herbs. Please don’t ever feel like… I know it is so hard to live in a society that thinks that only small, skinny women are valid. And men have their own body issues. And then of course, there’s everything in between too, right?

You are Valid As Is

Katja (11:48):
So, we’ve all been just saddled with these ideas of what health is, and what beauty is, and what’s acceptable and valid for your body. Your body is acceptable and valid. You’re in it. You exist. That means you’re valid. If it wasn’t valid, it wouldn’t exist. There are all different kinds of trees, and some of them grow kind of crooked or whatever else. Is that not valid because the tree… I’m looking out the window right now, and there’s a really tall, straight up and down tree. And then there’s a tree that’s way curvy. And is the curvy tree not right? Is it somehow broken? It’s just as old. It’s just as big as the straight up and down tree. We can’t all be the same. That would be so boring. And also it would be so impractical. If we were all the same, there would be a whole lot of problems that we couldn’t solve because we would all just be in this one bandwidth, right? We need all of us. We need all of us to solve the problems. We need all of us to have all the perspectives.

Katja (13:04):
And so yes, there is prejudice out there. But that’s stuff we can take care of with business skills. That’s stuff we can take care of… like if you’re worried about having an herbal business because you are whatever size you are, do not worry about that. We can handle that. And don’t let it stop you because we need you. We need all of us. And also, I don’t want to sound like I’m saying that concern is not valid. It is valid. I have that concern too. I used to be a lot skinnier. When Ryn and I met, it was 2007, and I weighed 145 pounds. I’m six feet tall. That’s not really enough pounds. Now it is 2025, and I weigh 225 pounds. Well, I’m perimenopausal. And I went through a period of pretty extreme grief that I dealt with by comfort food. Gluten-free, dairy-free comfort food, I mean I tried to… Listen. Do you see? I have to do that. The pressure you’re feeling is real, is what I’m trying to say. I feel it too. I feel it too when I look at the videos that I made when I was younger, and I look at the videos that I make now. And I think I’m much larger now. And I also think what if people don’t believe me because I got bigger?

Katja (15:09):
But everybody does that. Everybody gets bigger. Everybody has whatever they have. Our bodies, we don’t even always have control over it. I mean, I can’t control how tall I am. And believe it or not, there are aspects of weight that are very difficult to control as well. Some of those aspects were keyed into your system before you were even born. And some of those aspects were keyed into your system before you had autonomy, like when you were a child. It’s not always something that you have complete control over in terms of the exact number of pounds that you weigh. And getting really thin often requires unhealthy strategies. So yes, it’s true. It’s scary to put yourself out there when you feel like you don’t look like whatever the social ideal is of what we’re supposed to look like so that we’re healthy, and attractive, and whatever else.

Real People Relate

Katja (16:29):
I don’t want to be the social ideal. I want to be real, and I want to help real people. Nope. Okay. Yeah, some people are the social ideal, but most people aren’t. And I think that we are more in our integrity to help others when we’ve really gone through it ourselves, whatever it is. I don’t have to go through exactly what you’re going through. You don’t have to go through exactly what I’m going through for us to be able to relate to each other. But we need to have gone through some things to be able to relate to other people who have gone through some things. We need real people, real bodies, and we need everyone. We need the diversity. We need the full spectrum of experiences and of life. We need you.

Katja (17:46):
So, I don’t know. If this has been a question on your mind. If you have ever felt like you wanted to learn this stuff, but you didn’t know where you could go without being criticized for your body. Here, right here, this is where. Whatever you look like, whatever you feel like, whatever you identify as, whatever your experiences have been, we want you. We want you. So yes, you’re right. There are people out there who will judge. You know you’re right because you’ve already experienced it. You don’t need me to tell you that you’re right. You’re right. But not everybody will. And the more that we come together as people who value each other. As people who value real people, not fake influencers. Then that’s the movement that we’re making. Yeah. Anyway, you’re welcome here. We want you. We want you. And that’s what I have to say. So, I hope this was helpful for you. Please feel free to email me if you have been feeling this way, and you just need somebody to send you a hug. Or if you have questions about anything, you can email us. It’s info@commonwealthherbs.com. I want to hear from you. And maybe you just needed to hear somebody say that. And if so, then I hope that this was helpful. All right. And later today, Ryn’s going to make an episode that is organized, and orderly, and has flow, and is very rational, and all that stuff. So until then, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And love your body. Bye-bye.